Open Trench Method not acceptable to Chester County

From an Article by Michael P. Rellahan, Daily Local News, Chester County. PA, January 23, 2020

WEST CHESTER — A Chester County Common Pleas Court judge on January 23rd denied the county’s request for an injunction against Sunoco Pipeline to halt construction on the controversial Mariner East 2 project on two county-owned properties after deciding he did not have the authority to decide the case.

Judge Edward Griffith issued a terse ruling after an hour-long hearing involving attorneys from the county and the pipeline company, saying that he did not have “subject matter jurisdiction” to rule on the matter. He issued no explanation, but his decision effectively means that work on the pipeline at the Chester County Library and Chester Valley Trail can start tomorrow.

A spokeswomen for Energy Transfers, Sunoco’s parent company, company Vice President Vicki Anderson Granado, hailed the decision and indicated that work would begin soon.

The county commissioners, who had filed the request for an emergency injunction last week after being notified by Sunoco that work would commence at their properties on Friday, issued the following statement after Griffith’s ruling.

“The county is disappointed with the court’s ruling and is exploring all legal options that remain available to ensure that Sunoco Pipeline LP adheres to the provisions and terms of the easement that Sunoco drafted,” it read.

But since the judge essentially accepted Sunoco’s argument that the case involves permitting questions involving the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and approvals by the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC), neither of which was included in the county’s injunction request. Thus, the county’s attempt to put a stop to the work was flawed and should be rejected.

Lead attorney Robert L. Byer of the Philadelphia law firm of Duane Morris, noted that the PA DEP and the PA PUC both had given permission for the pipeline to be built and that the company’s use of the “open-trench” construction method was justified in order to protect the public water supply.

Louis Kupperman, the attorney from the West Chester law firm of Buckley, Brion, Morris & McGuire, on the other hand, urged Griffith to find that the issue at hand was purely a contract dispute, over which he had authority, between the county and Sunoco involving a provision in the county’s easement that it have a say in what type of construction method is used in the pipeline as it crossed the library and trail property.

In the hearing, Judge Griffith peppered both sides with questions about the legal case, but also about Sunoco’s need to hasten project construction. The company had been granted permission to resume construction by the PA DEP earlier this month after it levied a $30 million fine against its parent company, Energy Transfer Inc. of Texas. “What’s the rush?”

Mariner East goes 23 miles through the heart of Chester County – including the two county-owned plots — and then another 11 miles through western Delaware County. Eventually, the pipeline will transport hundreds of thousands of barrels of volatile liquid natural gases from the state’s Marcellus Shale region to a facility in Marcus Hook. It has drawn severe attacks from local governments, environmental activists, and residents in both counties.

The project has been plagued by spills and runoffs, while work has been halted several times by the state. Pennsylvania also has slapped millions in fines against the company, but has been unable to stop the multi-billion dollar project, which has the support of labor groups, the chamber of commerce and some public officials.

More than 80 years ago, Sunoco LP’s predecessors acquired a pipeline right-of-way over privately owned lands in West Whiteland. The county subsequently purchased portions of the land, and in February 2017, Sunoco sought supplemental easements for the properties.

Those supplemental easements required Sunoco to install its pipelines using road bore method or horizontal directional drilling method, which would not disturb the surface of the property, or use the traditional open-trench method should conditions necessitate it, according to the county.

The easements stated that the open-trench method of construction may not proceed unless Sunoco provided substantial evidence to the county that conditions beyond Sunoco’s reasonable control necessitate the use of the open-trench method, or that Sunoco received written permission from the county, according to the commissioners’ motion.

However, the company has responded that the county’s suit cannot proceed because it does not list as parties to the action either the PA DEP, which issued approval of the construction permits initially and again this month, and the state Public Utilities Commission, which certified the pipeline project as a public service. Those are the agencies that granted approval for the type of construction, and the county cannot counter their decisions, the company attorneys wrote.

“The county’s petition flatly ignores that the permanent easements specifically contemplate the use of the ‘open-trench’ method,” the company’s motion to dismiss the petition for an injunction stated. “They do not require the county’s written consent to the change.”

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Major Ethane Pipeline Seeking Customers

From a Notice by Paul J. Gough, Pittsburgh Business Journal, February 3, 2020

A major pipeline between Washington County (PA) and Ontario, Canada, is seeking customers that would want to ship ethane.

Energy Transfer LP said it had declared open season for the Mariner West pipeline, which connects the MarkWest plant in Houston, PA, to Michigan and near the industrial center of Sarnia, Ontario.

The binding open season solicits customers for a pipeline, where the companies will be guaranteed transportation of their fluids — in this case, natural gas byproduct ethane — to a certain point.

Mariner West is a project of Sunoco Pipeline LP, a division of Energy Transfer. The 395-mile pipeline, which started operations in late 2013, carries Marcellus Shale ethane from Houston, PA, and other points in Pennsylvania to Marysville, Michigan. It has a capacity of 50,000 barrels a day of ethane.

Range Resources at Cross Creek Park

New information surfaces in Washington County PA water well contamination complaint

From an Article by Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 16, 2015

Range Resources used chemical and low-grade radioactive isotope “tracers” to chart and analyze the reach of hydraulic fracturing done on a gas well in Amwell in 2009.

But, according to a motion filed Wednesday in Commonwealth Court by attorneys for Loren “Buzz” Kiskadden, the gas drilling company didn’t tell nearby property owners in Washington County who were dealing with contaminated water wells.

And last fall, the motion continued, Range didn’t say it used specially formulated fracking tracers during a hearing before the state Environmental Hearing Board, after which the board affirmed the state Department of Environmental Protection’s determination that Range’s Yeager 7H shale gas well in Amwell didn’t contaminate Mr. Kiskadden’s water.

Now his lawyers, John and Kendra Smith, are tracking those recently revealed tracers as they try to map a hydrogeologic link between Mr. Kiskadden’s water well and Range’s Yeager gas well and an adjacent, leaky 13.5-million gallon fracking wastewater impoundment.

The Smiths are asking Commonwealth Court to vacate the hearing board decision denying their client’s contamination claim and send the case back to the board for a rehearing on the new evidence. They filed an initial appeal of the hearing board decision last month.

The tracer information came from sworn depositions by employees of Multi-Chem and Universal Well Services Inc., two of Range’s fracking stage subcontractors on the Yeager well. The employees were subpoenaed for a separate but parallel case in Washington County involving additional allegations of water contamination from Range’s Yeager well site.

“We just stumbled upon it in the depositions, but it shows we didn’t have all the information, and the information we didn’t have could have changed the outcome at the EHB,” Mr. Smith said. “The EHB never had a chance to look at this evidence, and that’s prejudicial to the case.”

According to the filing, antimony — one of three solid tracers used at the Yeager well by Protechnics — another Range subcontractor, was also found at four times the federal maximum contaminant level for drinking water in Mr. Kiskadden’s well.

The filing also alleges that Range, which argued during the case that Mr. Kiskadden’s water was typical of the area’s ground water, concealed a draft letter by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry that showed the water to contain high concentrations of sodium, total dissolved solids, methane, arsenic and “diesel range organics,” some “high enough to affect your health …”

In response to questions about allegations in the Commonwealth Court filing, Range spokesman Matt Pitzarella cited the hearing board’s June decision and an EPA study in maintaining that the company’s operations didn’t contaminate Mr. Kiskadden’s water.

“There’s no additional information in this filing that changes the fact that Range and the broader industry is protective of the environment and the public,” Mr. Pitzarella wrote in an email response to questions, “and that Range’s activities did not impact Mr. Kiskadden’s water supply in any way.”

The drilling boom in Pennsylvania is a decade old, but little is known about tracers, the chemical and low-level radio nuclei added to the fracking process to assess the success of drilling thousands of feet underground.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Marcellus Drilling & Fracking: 2004 to 2014

Fracking in Marcellus turns 10 years old: 2004 to 2014

From an Article by David Conti, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, November 7, 2014

It doesn’t take a petroleum engineer to see how far fracking has come since its first successful use on a Marcellus shale well 10 years ago.

< < Bird’s-eye view photos of Range Resources Corp.’s work sites at the Renz well it completed in Washington County in 2004 and a more recent well illustrate a decade of improving environmental safeguards and production techniques. The earlier view shows mounds of dirt where Fort Worth-based Range, which at the time was focused on exploring the shale’s potential, cut into a Mt. Pleasant hillside with few erosion or spill-prevention safeguards in place. The modern frack job takes place on a stone-covered well pad, lined and buffered to control spills and reduce disturbances, with tanks and equipment already in place to handle water, sand and eventual gas production. >>

“We just scratched the surface,” said Dennis Degner, vice president of Southern Marcellus operations at the Range Resources office in Cecil. “There’s really a complete paradigm shift in environmental stewardship,” Degner said.

The improvements were driven by the companies themselves, seeking safer and more efficient techniques, as well as pressure from environmental groups and regulators. In some cases, such as spill controls, the industry’s best practices became models for regulations, said Scott Perry, deputy secretary for oil and gas management at the state Department of Environmental Protection.

“As some drillers say, if you want to innovate, you have to operate,” Perry said, noting that many containment technologies mandated today did not exist until energy companies developed them in the field.

Hydraulic fracturing still requires pumping millions of gallons of water and tons of sand into the well at very high pressure. The 2004 photo shows several dozen 22,000-gallon water tanks that Range trucked to the site and dump trucks full of sand. Today, tankers deliver sand to mobile silos equipped with digital controls and dust reduction. Range and others bring much of the water to sites through pipes that fill tanks.  “The water line has been a huge advantage for us. It allows us to transfer water over several miles to that location,” Degner said.

In the 2004 photo, engineers controlling the work gathered around vans near the well. Today, the “frack van” is a trailer designed to remotely control all activities.  The site includes the well’s permanent tanks and equipment, which workers built during drilling activities to shorten the construction time. It is also surrounded by buffers and terraced fields to control erosion or sediment movement.

“I’ll put an oil and gas site up to any other construction site,” Perry said, noting the increased focus on such controls.

The industry and elected officials on Wednesday will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Renz well and Marcellus drilling during a gala in Cecil hosted by the Washington County Chamber of Commerce. Renz is no longer producing gas.

Perry predicts additional changes in the next 10 years, especially surrounding water management. Companies have struggled while dealing with wastewater, including Range and Downtown-based EQT Corp., both of which the DEP recently fined more than $4 million each for leaks from large water impoundments.

Using water lines and recycling wastewater for use in other wells has cut down on truck traffic, but challenges remain.  “Even with recycling, they still have some waste material that they can’t recycle, that requires disposal,” said John Walliser, vice president of legal and government affairs at the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.

Federal rules taking effect next year will reduce the number of diesel engines running frack sites, which should further cut air emissions. Perry said companies are looking for alternatives to water in the fracturing process.  “We’ll see more innovation,” Perry said.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net